The Flaw that May Bring Down Bitcoin or Change it Forever

Bitcoin is currently being used as a publishing system due to a design feature/flaw. That flaw threatens the viability of Bitcoin as a currency. How so? Some folks have expoited that feature/flaw to publish Wikileaks cables and pedophile porn links in bitcoin's blockchain. Of course, that's a problem. It may attact some aggressive behavior from governments, well before it reaches a maturation. However, that's a problem. Since bitcoin is decentralized, the steps required to prevent people from publishing information. This now becomes the multi-billion $$ question: can Bitcoin fix itself or will it end up becoming an illegal backwater? To find out how it's done and what can actually be done about it, I contacted Jeff Garzik on the Bitcoin software team (it's a little technical, but you can follow the logic): Sending bitcoins requires two pieces of data: a bitcoin address, an...